The Research On Mental Modules' Method

The evolutionary psychology is a new research field. The evolutionary psychologist thought that the humans solved series of adaptive problems successfully for survival and reproduction, and all relevant mechanisms were domain-specific. These special mechanisms were productions of natural selection. So, the researchers thought that the evolved mechanisms had modularity. Based on these ideas, the paper began to elaborate the relevant research methodology.Firstly, this paper discussed the origins of evolutionary psychology. In field of evolutionary biology, Darwin's theories of natural selection and sexual selection, and the emergence of hereditism and the inclusive fitness made great progress with evolutionary psychology. In the area of psychology, the influence of evolutionary biology once made psychologists pay close attention to humans' instinct, but then the emergence of the behaviorist denied humans' inborn competence. But the following cognitive psychology enlightened us to pay attention to the mental mechanisms and instincts again. Therefore, it offered an opportunity for the development and flourish of evolutionary psychology.Then, this paper expounded the relationship between evolutionary psychology and module. Fodor considered the module as a computer system that was information-encapsulated, domain-specific, and impenetrate and innate. Each module was one mental mechanism. The theory of mental module supposed the modules were mechanisms evolved in human's brain. The evolutionary psychology also emphasized the mechanisms evolved in solving adaptive problems. Therefore, we can say that the research on mental mechanisms in evolutionary psychology field in fact is the research on mental modules.The most important parts of this paper were the methodology, including functional decompositions and evolution analyses. The functional decompositions method aimed to discover the structural features and operation modes of the mental mechanism. In evolutionary psychology, this method could help us to understand the mental mechanisms, which were designed to solve the special adaptive problems. The adaptive problems were the vital problems that our ancestry had to resolve to survive and reproduce. The adaptive problems had no concerned with the present problems, but concerned the statistical situations actually encountered by our ancestry during the evolutionary history. Because of this character, the evolution analyses were used to help us to understand our present mental mechanisms. Meanwhile, the paper discussed some other methods such as the levels of evolutionary analysis and experimental method. This paper considered that the functional decomposition was the core method of evolutionary psychology research, and the evolution analyses and some others were also important to the development of the evolutionary psychology.The last part was the evaluation about the methodology. "The past explains the present" was the general trait and unique idea of evolutionary psychology's method. Furthermore, the researchers could understand the adaptive problems and the present mental mechanisms based on the principle of domain-specificity. In addition, the methodology was also consistent with the tendency that scientific fields were merged and reciprocal. With the limitation of time and space, the research of evolutionary psychology had some deficiencies. Some researchers didn't get a clear understand of "Darwinian Modules". These all needed our further research in future.